Critic's Views

Kirkus ReviewsThis brilliant fiction works thrilling variations on, and consolations for, its plangent message: that "in the end, everyone loses everyone." [1 Jan 2005, p.8]
Library Journal Rebecca MillerFoer's excellent second novel vibrates with the details of a current tragedy but successfully explores the universal questions that trauma brings on its floodtide. [1 Mar 2005, p.78]
Publishers WeeklyFoer demonstrates once again that he is one of the few contemporary writers willing to risk sentimentalism in order to address great questions of truth, love and beauty. [31 Jan 2005, p.46]
Salon Priya JainIt seems clear at this point that Foer has successfully graduated from being a one-off wunderkind to an accomplished and graceful writer
San Francisco Chronicle Tom BarbashThere are moments when Foer comes close to brilliance -- to a startling emotional acuity, but too many times he's undone by cleverness, by the need to perform.
Booklist John Green[Oskar's] first-person narration of his journey is arrestingly beautiful, and readers won't soon forget him. [1 F
The New Yorker John UpdikeThe book’s hyperactive visual surface covers up a certain hollow monotony in its verbal drama.
The Onion A.V. Club Andy BattagliaIt's a testament to Foer's writing that his dazzling way with words never trumps the emotions he serves, and that those emotions--pain, somberness, regret--never lose sight of the love and hope they coexist with.
London Review Of Books Wyatt MasonOnce you get past some sloppy stage-setting and the unlikeliness of Oskar’s quest... the novel earns your trust. Whereas Everything Is Illuminated grows more ponderous and preposterous, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close improves and deepens.
Entertainment Weekly Jennifer ReeseEven if a few of his gambits fall flat, it's hard to fault a 28-year-old novelist for such an intense hunger to connect.
Houston Chronicle Fritz LanhamExtremely Loud & Incredibly Close could easily have been a cloying, incoherent mess, but it isn't. It's really a lovely book, humane and quirky and for the most part hard to put down.
Washington Post Ron CharlesDespite the dramatically contemporary subject of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Foer hasn't invented something new as much as shifted the plot of his spectacularly successful Everything Is Illuminated.
The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Annabel LyonIf you have not read Everything is Illuminated and don't recognize the parallels -- the charming central voice, pathos-laden story of the ancestors, sense of vast conspiracy, big historical issues -- you'll take pleasure in seeing them here for the first time. [2 Apr 2005, p.D5]
Los Angeles Times Richard Eder[An] ambitious and in some ways impressive book. [3 Apr 2005]
The Spectator Olivia GlazebrookFrom the very first page it is a hugely involving read.
Sydney Morning Herald Mark TewfikFor all its flaws, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a serious, clever, funny work, which should be read and remembered.
New York Review Of Books Keith GessenThe skepticism and satire that marked the best parts of Everything Is Illuminated are nowhere in evidence here.
The Nation Vivian GornickIf Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is as popular with readers as Everything Is Illuminated, it will be because Foer is indeed the wunderkind the country needs and therefore deserves: a writer of talent who exploits holocaust to mythicize the most aggressive self-pity in modern American history, the kind that feeds relentlessly on a nostalgia that seriously reduces whatever chance we have of understanding what we are living through.
The Guardian Michel FaberLooking back at my jottings in the margins of Foer's new book, I can't deny how frequently and furiously I've scribbled "Aaaarrghh!"
Daily Telegraph Christopher TaylerThe faults of his previous book are repeated and magnified: only readers with a very high tolerance for massive doses of whimsy stand a chance of making it all the way to the end.
Daily Telegraph Anthony QuinnThe impact of the story feels muffled by the fragmented, desultory structure and an eccentric textual surface that never looks more than a distracting gimmick.
TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Henry HitchingsEach of these contrivances serves a purpose, and they combine to make the novel an aesthetically impressive artefact. But Foer's virtuosity is self-conscious, and his characters tend to seem like syntheses of quirks and stylized tics.
Boston Globe Steve AlmondThe book is energetic, inventive, and ambitious, while also, at times, indulgent, contrived, and crushingly desperate for attention.
Chicago Sun-Times Roger GathmanThis time, the hawking of poignancy and tears is less successful, the authorial manipulation more unpleasant.
The New York Times Book Review Walter KirnNo traditional story could put forward the tritenesses that Foer reshuffles, folds, cuts into strips, seals in seven separate envelopes and then, astonishingly, makes whole, causing the audience to ooh and aah over notions that used to make it groan.
The Independent Scarlett ThomasThere's no denying that Safran Foer is capable of exceptional writing, but in this book he seems to use it to suffocate his characters, rather in the same way that Jonathan Franzen did in The Corrections.
Wall Street Journal Robert J. HughesIt is all supposed to be profound in a faux-innocent way, but it comes off as manipulative, like a ripped-from-the-headlines cop show with literary pretensions.
Atlantic Monthly B. R. MyersAfter a while the gimmickry starts to remind one of a clown frantically yanking toys out of his sack: a fatal image.
Chicago Tribune Melvin Jules BukietExtremely manipulative and incredibly cloying.
The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
While it contains moments of shattering emotion and stunning virtuosity that attest to Mr. Foer's myriad gifts as a writer, the novel as a whole feels simultaneously contrived and improvisatory, schematic and haphazard.